B: Proper 6

There’s a movie that was hugely popular about 25 years ago called Chariots of Fire. Some of you, know doubt, remember it. For me, the most memorable part of the movie was the opening scene, which took place at the funeral of the main character (the rest of the film was then, of course, a flashback). And what I remember most vividly about that scene was a particularly stirring hymn that they sang at the funeral, a hymn that, in its day, was known by just about every Englishman, and it’s from this hymn that the title line of the movie comes from—“bring me my … chariot of fire.” It is a setting of a short poem by William Blake, which you may be familiar with, and which I will shortly read to you.

But first, two bits of information: the poem was written during the Industrial Revolution in England, so the expression “dark satanic mills” refers to the factories which employed thousands of workers in sweaty and back-breaking labor. And, it is based on the legend—interesting but not really based on anything resembling historical fact—that the young man Jesus, before he began his public ministry, travelled to England with his uncle, who was involved in the tin trade. So, with those two observations in mind, here is Jerusalem, by William Blake:

And did those feet in ancient times Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy lamb of God In England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the countenance divine Shine forth upon those clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here among those dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold, Bring me my arrows of desire. Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold, Bring me my chariot of fire. I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.

“Till we have built Jerusalem...” Jerusalem, of course, is a sort of biblical code word for the perfect society, the kingdom of God come in all its fullness, where the lion lies down with the lamb and children play with snakes and nobody goes hungry or poorly housed or is treated unjustly or has any reason to weep. William Blake looked at the “dark satanic mills” and vowed to labor without ceasing until “Jerusalem”—the perfect society of his dreams—was built in his country.

We all have a “Jerusalem” that we would like to build. We all have some area of intense discomfort with things as they are, and are anxious to make the transition to things as they will be. We are all aware that the kingdom of God is here, but not yet completely here, and poems like Jerusalem make us want to join the struggle, and storm the gates of hell like the soldiers who invaded the beaches of Normandy on D-day.

The “Jerusalem” that we would like to build may be, as it was for Blake, one of social justice, changing the structures and fabric of our society to reflect God’s justice and compassion and love. The “Jerusalem” we would like to build may be one of restoring morality and virtue and moral fiber to our nation and our community, of strengthening families and developing character. Or, we may have a burning concern to build up the church, perhaps even a particular parish—perhaps even St Anne’s! I will admit that building St Anne’s has been the “Jerusalem” of my life for the past two years. Or, the Jerusalem that we seek to build may be entirely interior: a quest for knowledge, or skill, or spiritual growth. Indeed, when we pray “thy kingdom come”, the vision of the kingdom that each of us brings to that prayer varies greatly from person to person.

What these different visions have in common however, is the notion that we are key players in bringing the dream to reality, that God is depending on us to “make it happen”, and that the only reason mankind has not yet achieved the ideal society is that we haven’t yet all gotten together and coordinated our efforts and work hard enough. It seems like plain common sense. When president Kennedy, in his inaugural address in 1961, said that “God's work must truly be our own”, who would have been inclined to question him? Of course God’s work must be our work, and where can we sign up? The same thing goes for the expression, “God helps those who help themselves.” After all, it's even in the Bible, isn't it?

Or is it?

Actually, “God helps those who help themselves” may at times be a useful piece of advice, but it is nowhere to be found in Holy Scripture! And the idea that God’s work must truly be our own may find some support in the Bible, but not in the way President Kennedy was thinking. Through the parables of Jesus recorded for us today in Mark's gospel, God gives us a reality check. He lets us in on an important bit of information about his kingdom and when and how it will come into its fullness. A farmer goes out and plants his crops—preparing the ground, sowing the seed, giving it a little water.

Then he goes home and takes a nap! And it's not a fretful, anxiety-ridden sleep. He sleeps like a newborn baby. And he rises, and goes back to sleep, and rises, and goes back to sleep, and before he knows it, the seeds have sprouted, and grown, and the next thing the farmer does is harvest the crop. What he had thrown into the ground as dry, lifeless seeds has now become a lush, mature, edible, marketable crop. The farmer prepared, and the farmer planted, and the farmer tended, and the farmer harvested, but as to what took place in between those activities, and how it was accomplished and when it was accomplished, the farmer is completely in the dark. He does not make the crops grow.

And you and I do not make "Jerusalem" happen. God wants us to be available for him to work through us, but he does not depend on us. There is absolutely nothing we can do to either advance or hinder the progress of the kingdom of God. God is in charge of seeing that his kingdom comes, that “Jerusalem” happens. I admire William Blake's spirit and courage, and the music to which his poem has been set is uplifting and thrilling, and I love hearing it sung! But William Blake went to his grave without ever having built “Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land.” And you and I will go to our graves without ever having built “Jerusalem”, whether “Jerusalem” is a vision for peace and social justice, public and personal righteousness, church growth and evangelism, or personal spiritual development.

Some of us have the privilege of laying the foundation of some corner of God's kingdom, and some of us pound a few nails here or install some plumbing there, and other of us at times have the honor of opening the doors, but we are not the builders. God is the builder. The city gets built his way and in his time, and, although we all have jobs to do, the project belongs to God, and there's really nothing any one of us can do to either slow down the work or speed it up.

To the extent that we take responsibility for God’s work, we find ourselves engaged in maneuvering and manipulating, fretting and worrying. To the extent that we leave the building of God’s kingdom to God, and stick to our job of announcing it and living it and taking care of those relatively small tasks that are assigned to us, we exercise the eyes of faith that see the crop already in the seed, the fulfillment already in the promise. If we try to build Jerusalem, we find ourselves wrapped up in legalities and technicalities, and a bunch of anxiety. If we remember that that Jerusalem is the city of God, we give ourselves over to waiting and watching that will enable us to see it over the horizon and proclaim the good news with boldness. As long as we cling to the burden of making God’s kingdom happen, we are subject to doubt and anxiety. When we yield that burden back to God, we open ourselves to confidence and hope.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” Amen.

Pentecost

This is the Day of Pentecost. I’ll refer you to the Liturgical Notes in the service booklet for all the technical details, but simply reiterate here that it is one of the “Big Seven” in our liturgical calendar—those special occasions that are styled “Principal Feasts.” But even within that elite group of seven, there is a sort of unofficial hierarchy, in which Pentecost would occupy the top tier, along with Christmas and Easter. Historically, in the Church of England, you were considered in good standing if you received Holy Communion on at least those three occasions. But we have to admit, in terms of popular imagination, Pentecost is a shrinking violet in comparison with Christmas and Easter. It has nowhere near the emotional appeal, nowhere near the sentimental associations that those holidays have. Nobody tells stories about their memories of family gatherings on Pentecost. It’s not a time for exchanging gifts, I’d bet most of us here would be hard pressed to name our favorite Pentecost hymn, and, this year so far, I have yet to receive even one Pentecost card!

No doubt, the main reason why Pentecost, as a feast day, has failed to occupy a very large place in our hearts is that the Holy Spirit, the One whom Pentecost celebrates, is one of the least understood aspects of our Christian belief system. Yahweh, the Lord, the God of the Old Testament, is at least somebody we’re familiar with. He’s a “character,” with a lot of outrageously memorable words and deeds to His credit. And in the New Testament, Jesus, of course, is human, so we can identify with him. He eats and sleeps and walks and talks just like we do. But the Holy Spirit is slippery, difficult to pin down. The Spirit therefore remains, for many, an abstraction, a concept . . . unless, that is, you are one of those who believe they have experienced the Holy Spirit in a dramatic and personal way.

Most of the time, such a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit comes by means of witnessing a healing miracle, or, better yet, being the subject of a healing miracle. When broken bones and damaged spinal cords heal in ways they’re not supposed to, when cancer cells voluntarily disappear, when nearsightedness corrects itself to 20/20 overnight, it’s suddenly a lot easier to talk about the Holy Spirit.

Or, much of the time, when someone testifies to a close encounter with the Holy Spirit, it is after receiving the gift of tongues—the ability to pray aloud in speech patterns that one has not learned and does not recognize, but which flood the soul with warmth and a conviction that one is in the very presence of God.

People who have had these sorts of experience sometimes—and I do stress sometimes, because it isn’t always the case—such people sometimes “major” in the Holy Spirit at the expense of a fully balanced Christian walk. Just as it is a mistake to overlook the Holy Spirit, it is equally wrong to dwell on the Holy Spirit, to the exclusion of the Father and the Son—or, for that matter, the church, the sacraments, the scriptures, or a disciplined life of prayer. But the more dangerous temptation that beckons those who have experienced the Holy Spirit in a powerful way is to become smug and superior, to scorn, belittle, intimidate, and become generally obnoxious toward those Christians who have not had such an experience. This can be as overt as a finger-pointing lecture, or as subtle as a condescending smile. Either way, the implication is that Christians who have not had some obvious powerful experience of the Holy Spirit are somehow inferior, second-class, or maybe not even authentically Christian.

So let’s get back to basics, and see if we can’t begin, at least, to clear up a misunderstanding or two. We are going to do some baptizing today. The discipline of our church recommends that baptisms be reserved for five specific occasions throughout the year, and the Day of Pentecost is one of those occasions. After we take these three young people into the water— “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” —we will anoint them with oil and sign them with the cross and say to them, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Then we will say a prayer over all of them together, and in this prayer we will thank God our Father
that He has bestowed on these newly-minted Christians the forgiveness of sins and the life of Christ’s resurrection by means of “water and the Holy Spirit.” We will then go on to ask God to “sustain them in [His] Holy Spirit.”

If we indeed believe as we pray, what this means is that these young people are about to be given the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of the Living God, who has already been working on their hearts in preparation for this day, will take up full-time permanent residence, and become a personal resource more valuable than any mentor or teacher they will ever have. But what’s even more remarkable is that, along with this gift of the Holy Spirit, they will also receive, through the sacrament of baptism, gifts from the Holy Spirit.

Some of these gifts may include items from the various list of spiritual gifts that were find enumerated in various passages of scripture. At the time of baptism, we don’t know who’s going to be getting what gifts. Nor are these exhaustive lists—the Holy Spirit is an abundant giver.

Moreover, the Holy Spirit is not for an elite minority within the church who have had some kind of dramatic experience. The Holy Spirit is for the whole church, and for all her members. If you are baptized, you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t matter whether you feel it or not, you have it! The Holy Spirit dwells within your soul, ready to fill you with the life of God, ready to unleash His power within you as soon as you give the green light. Indeed, St Paul, when he writes to the Corinthians, says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit...”. However, he doesn’t stop there. He qualifies his statement. The gift of the Holy Spirit is universal to all Christians, but there are strings attached. Along with this essential birthright comes an equally essential responsibility. “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” The gift of the Holy Spirit, and the gifts we receive from the Holy Spirit, are not personal playthings. They are to be employed to the glory of God and the building up of His church.

In the book of Acts we read of a fellow named Simon Magus. He was impressed with the power of the Holy Spirit, particularly as it operated in the gift of healing in the ministry of St Peter and other early apostles. Simon was a man of some means, and he offered Peter cold hard cash in exchange for the spiritual gift of healing. As we might say today, he was “clueless.” The Holy Spirit is not for sale to the highest bidder. No gift from the Holy Spirit is for our own selfish use. Rather, they are all for the building up of the whole people of God, for the strengthening of the church in her mission and ministry.

Now, it must not be left unsaid, many gifts of the Spirit are woefully and tragically underutilized. If all Christians became aware of their gifts and began to exercise those gifts in a faithful manner, the impact on the church—and the church’s impact on the world—could scarcely be imagined. The situation as it actually exists in many Christian communities can be likened to that of a professional soccer match in South America, where 60,000 fans desperately in need of exercise are watching 22 athletes desperately in need of a rest! So as we baptize these young people, let our prayer be that they develop an early awareness of the gifts they receive in this sacrament, and that one of those gifts be faith sufficient to exercise the others.

The Holy Spirit is the birthright of all Christians; it is not just for a few, but for all. And exercising the gifts of the Holy Spirit is the responsibility of all Christians; again, not just the few, but all. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Fill the hearts of your faithful people and kindle in us the fire of your love. Alleluia and Amen.

B: Easter VI (2009)

John 15:9-17

As many of you know, I began my ordained ministry some twenty years ago as a chaplain and religion instructor at a parochial day school.  The curriculum that I used to teach the first through fourth graders included a unit on what are known—although I didn’t use this term with them—as the “three cardinal virtues”, referring, of course, to faith, hope, and love.  We had done very well with faith and hope, and so it was finally time to talk about love.  So I asked them, “What would you say love is—what would be a good definition for love.”  I received quite a variety of answers to this question, but the consistent thread that ran through every class was something like this: “Love is when you like someone a whole lot.”  In other words, to put it in more grownup language, love is a particularly intense feeling of affection. As long as the feeling lasts, love endures. When the feeling dies, love vanishes. 

Our Lord says, unmistakably, “Love one another.” I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of intimidated by this command. I don’t always feel very loving. I don’t always feel an intense affection for everyone I meet, even my brothers and sisters in Christ. As long as we understand love to be a feeling, we are only going to end up frustrated, angry, and guilty. Some psychologists, you know, tell us that the average person is emotionally capable of keeping track of only about a hundred relationships. That may seem like a large number, but when you stop to add up family members—aunts, uncles, cousins, what not—and then add neighbors, co-workers, and friends, you can reach a hundred very quickly. Heck, I have 166 “friends” just on Facebook, and that’s without really trying!

So you can see the bind that we’re in. Christians are exhorted to love each other. St Anne’s parish alone—which, we have to admit, does not include all the Christians in Warsaw—has something in the neighborhood of 250 active members. None of us, though, is capable of feeling intense affection for this many people in addition to all the others in our lives, so it’s humanly impossible to keep the command to love one another.  Nothing is more damaging to one’s self-esteem than to be constitutionally incapable of carrying out a clear divine command. 

So . . . perhaps my students at St Luke’s school were wrong.  Perhaps love is something other than “liking someone a whole lot.”  Perhaps the sort of Christian love that we are called to is something more akin to what we tend to call “giving to charity.”  If this is love, then we certainly have ample opportunity to express it.  Every day we’re flooded with charitable appeals, from the United Thank Offering box sitting on the kitchen counter to Episcopal Relief & Development, to the United Way, and hundreds of thousands of other worthy causes. 

Yet, love-as-charitable giving dooms us to frustration just as surely as does love-as-affection. The world is always and ever-increasingly needy.  The demand for “charity” is a bottomless pit. The earthquakes, the wars, the floods, the droughts, the famines—all create an endless cycle of need that we simply cannot keep up with.  If we cannot satisfy the commandment to love one another until we have satisfied these needs, then we are hopelessly guilty, hopelessly incapable of    meeting such a requirement. 

Indeed, what failures we are! We are not able to love one another as God commands us to. We can’t feel intensely affectionate toward more than a hundred people, and we can’t give enough to charity to take care of all the victims of this world. God must not like us very much. 

Well  . . .  if loving is just a more intense version of liking, then it must logically follow that God doesn’t love us either!  Now we’re really in a conflict, because the scriptures assure us time and time again that God does love us, completely and irrevocably.  I hope God also likes us—although I suspect that there are times, at least, that he doesn’t.  But that’s beside the point, because his love for us is declared and demonstrated in the strongest possible terms. The measure of God’s love is declared and demonstrated in the act of the son of God’s laying down his life for us, for his friends, for those whom he loves.  “No one has greater love than this,” says Jesus in the fifteenth chapter of St John’s gospel, “than to lay down one’s life for those one loves.”  And in the same breath, Jesus says, “This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you.” 

As I have loved you. 

How has Jesus loved us? As we saw two weeks ago, by laying down his life.  How, then, are we to love one another?  The same way: by laying down our lives. Christian love is not essentially about feeling, and it is not about giving to charity. Christian love is essentially about sacrifice, about laying down one’s life. In this time, and in this place, of course, it is extremely unlikely that any of us will be asked to spill our own blood for the sake of Christian love. But there are countless other opportunities for us to lay down our lives in ways that fall short of physical death. We lay down our lives when we yield a place of honor to someone who may be less deserving of it than we are. We lay down our lives when we perform a service but give up being recognized for what we’ve done.  We lay down our lives when we make an anonymous gift—and, I might add, we lay down our lives when we consent to graciously receive thanks and recognition for a gift or service when we really would rather remain anonymous. We lay down our lives when we devote time or attention or just a listening ear to someone who may not even be all that needy, but nevertheless asks this of us. We lay down our lives whenever we are generously willing to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to assigning blame or responsibility.  We lay down our lives when we give up our right to be right, when we give up what is justly due us. We lay down our lives when we refuse to participate in petty quarrels and “turf” battles, especially within the church community. We lay down our lives when we give up the sublime and sweet pleasure of not being on speaking terms with, or feeling superior to, another member of the body of Christ. 

We have the opportunity to lay down our lives, to love one another as Christ loved us, every hour of every day.  When we realize and claim God’s love for us, manifested in Christ laying down his life, we are empowered to lay down our lives and let the love of Christ flow freely through us. This habitual laying down of our lives in love, every day, day after day, eventually benefits us, as well as those who are the objects of our love.  It allows us to identify with Christ in his death, which is at the heart of the process of the salvation of our souls. It allows us to experience that peace which passes all understanding. 

It may even—within the economy of God’s love and even his liking of us—enable us to feel deep affection for those we lay down our lives for, perhaps even more than a hundred of them! And, we may even, on occasion, be permitted to see the results of the sacrificial love which we offer. 

But whether or not we are ever allowed these momentary glimpses, we can rest in the assurance that we are indeed able to keep the command that we love one another.  It doesn’t demand that we feel anything. It doesn’t demand that we fix anything. It does invite us to claim the faith and the courage, both of which God offers us in his word and in his sacraments, to lay down our lives as Christ laid down his life for us.  Walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.  Alleluia and Amen.

B: Easter IV (5/3/09)

John 10:11-18

Life is uncertain and unpredictable. No surprise there, right? The longer we live in this world, the more concretely we know that reality. So, as a way of coping, we instinctively learn to hedge our bets, to keep our options open for as long as we can. A big part of the economic mess our country is in—indeed, the economic mess the world is in—comes from people trying to do just that: hedge their bets and reserve their options. That’s where the expression “hedge fund” comes from, and it’s the principle that lies underneath those incomprehensible financial instruments known as “derivatives” that are the culprits in our financial crisis. And it’s not at all hard to understand what makes people do this sort of thing. There is a cacophony of competing voices out there giving us advice, presuming to give us the straight facts on this or that, trying to make us trust them. It’s intimidating. I had a salesperson from Embarq call me the other night—of course, while I was trying to hold the phone in one hand and a dinner plate in the other while a cat tried to give me a backrub—this person from Embarq wanted me to switch our long distance to their plan, which is quite a bit more expensive than the plan we’re on presently, but she offered a nice discount on what we’re paying for our internet connection. I couldn’t keep it straight in my head, and when she said, no, she couldn’t send me an email with the details, I politely declined to continue the conversation. I was reserving my options, hedging my bets. We do this when we can’t see clearly why we should listen to one particular voice above all others.

Today we have one more voice inviting us to pay attention. It’s the voice of Jesus, the voice of him who calls himself the Good Shepherd. Jesus is calling us—that is, the Good Shepherd is calling his sheep—and saying “Follow me. I’ll protect you. I know where the green grass and the cool waters are. You can eat and drink all you need. I’ll watch your back.” Unfortunately, his voice is just one sound among many in our cacophonous environment. Some of us have responsibilities of work—and sometimes the literal voice of a boss—to pay attention to. Most of us have family members who are telling us things or asking us things or otherwise demanding our attention. Many of us have a difficult time tearing ourselves away from Facebook or Yahoo News or our favorite blogs and websites. And if all we do is watch TV or listen to the radio or drive around town we are still assaulted by various forms of advertizing that says, “Buy this. Do that. Think this way.”

It is in such an environment that the voice of Jesus the Good Shepherd calls out to us. It’s confusing. It’s intimidating. So we hedge our bets; we reserve our options. We hold back on the strength of our commitment to him. We don’t ignore him. We don’t abandon him. We continue to follow him … but we do so at a safe distance. Like a savvy airline traveler, we know how far we are from the nearest exit row. In the back of our minds, we’ve planned our escape route, just in case we need to get away … to get away from it all … including the competing—indeed, the persistently competing—voice of the Good Shepherd. Our Christian faith, our Christian identity, our involvement with the church—these all make up one part of our lives, one part among many other parts, one good thing among a great many good things that we are involved in and weigh against one another.

But, what if we stop? What if we stop just for a moment? What if we stop and just listen, listen to Jesus? When we do so, we discover that there’s something just a little different about Jesus the Good Shepherd, something that distinguishes his voice from all the other competing voices, something that makes it stand out from all the rest, something that begins to make us feel safer and more secure about not hedging our bets with him, not needing to pay such close attention to keeping out options open. We discover one very important fact about the Good Shepherd, and it’s this: The Good Shepherd is willing to lay down his life for the sheep. In fact, the Good Shepherd has laid down his life for the sheep.

That’s it. I can’t make it any plainer. And it makes all the difference in the world. No politician is willing to lay down his or her life for the people they call to follow them. General Motors desperately wants to sell you a car, and they may end up losing their corporate life, but, if so, it won’t be because they laid it down willingly. Only the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And in so doing, he demonstrates the extent of his love for us.

And in demonstrating that love, Jesus the Good Shepherd earns our trust. We see in his wild, untamed, unqualified, unrestricted, self-giving love the authentication of his credentials as the only One worthy of being followed with abandon. When an out-of-uniform law enforcement officer tries to interact with us officially, the first thing we want to see is his or her badge. The badge authenticates their position, and is the basis for their asking us to do something that any stranger off the street would not legitimately ask of us. The nail marks in the hands of the risen Christ constitute his badge. They constitute the basis on which he makes requests of us that are quite extraordinary, quite unlike anything anyone else could ask and get away with it. The willingness of the Good Shepherd to lay down his life for the sheep provides us with the assurance we need to follow him completely—no reservation, no hesitation, no hedging of bets, no quick scan for the exit row. It’s not that Jesus is simply more important to us than anything or anyone else. It’s that he becomes the lens through which we look at anything and everything else. His voice isn’t simply the loudest among many; it’s the one for which we tune out all others, listening to him first, and then hearing the others in the light of what we have heard from him.

In the words of the old Victorian hymn: “Jesus calls us o’er the tumult of our life’s tempestuous sea. Day by day his clear voice soundeth, saying, “Christian, follow me.”

Alleluia and Amen. 

Easter 2009

There is no eyewitness account of the actual event we are gathered here to celebrate.  No human eye saw Jesus cast off his grave clothes and stand upright. Nobody saw how the stone that sealed his tomb got rolled away. No one saw Jesus walk out of the grave. What we do have are eyewitness accounts of Jesus already already risen from the dead.

First, of course, are the women, with Mary Magdalene in the lead.  Then, on the evening of that first Easter Sunday, the risen Christ appeared to his disciples, then to others, as many as 500, as St Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians. Precisely because of what these people saw, and what they told others about what they saw, and for no other reason, you and I are assembled here at this moment doing what we’re doing. We may not be eye-witnesses, but we are ear-witnesses to the proclamation that Christ is risen from the dead.

That announcement has been handed down to us from generation to generation across nearly two thousand years of time.  We are here because of that announcement, and our lives are shaped by it.

Our Easter proclamation—Christ is risen: the Lord is risen indeed—enables us—indeed, compels us—to engage in and prosecute the mission of the church. In particular, it calls us to three specific activities, three distinctive actions which are the hallmark of the community which has been formed by the Easter announcement: “He is not here, he is risen.”  I speak of evangelizing, baptizing, and, to use a shamelessly manufactured word just so it will sound like the other two, eucharistizing.

First, the Easter message calls us to evangelize the world, starting with ourselves and our neighbors. In the 28th chapter of Matthew, in his final words on this earth, Jesus gives us our marching orders: “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Evangelism simply means “telling good news.” The good news, in this case, is that we don’t have to be at odds with God, we can have peace with God. We don’t have to be afraid of God or indifferent toward God, we can be friends with God. This happens through the forgiveness of our sins and a living personal relationship with the same Jesus Christ who rose from the dead sometime in the wee hours of that Sunday morning. If you don’t have that kind of relationship, then I’m here to evangelize you! Great news—God loves you and wants you to know him. Jesus wants to lift you by the hand, that you may live in the power of his resurrection and no longer fear death. What do you think? Would you like to respond to that good news?

Second, the Easter message calls us to baptize. Easter has always been the premier occasion for baptism, and if the reason is not apparent to you, please let me explain. In the person we know as Jesus, God the son took human flesh, lived and died as one of us, and then defeated death when he rose from the dead. When we are baptized, we are incorporated into his experience of dying and rising. We die and rise with him. Our own death is identified with his, and we are identified with his resurrection.  Those who are baptized into Christ, St Paul tells us, put on Christ, clothe themselves with Christ.  We thereafter belong to Christ, we are marked as his own forever. Our lives are hid with God in Christ.

Evangelize, baptize, and, finally, “eucharistize.”  The Easter announcement calls us to celebrate the Eucharist, the Mass, the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion. It compels us to honor the command of Christ on the night before he was betrayed to take, bless, break, and give, that we may receive his body and blood, given for the life of the world, that we may be his body, given for the life of the world. “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast.”  It is a feast that transcends time and space. In the liturgy of the Eucharist, we who are temporal participate in that which is eternal, earth is assumed into heaven, then becomes now and now becomes then, there becomes here and here becomes there, the notions of past, present, and future lose their meaning. In Holy Communion, we know death to be robbed of its sting because it becomes the gateway to eternal life.

We who are “ear-witnesses” have heard the announcement: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death. We are drawn by that proclamation to evangelism—the telling and hearing of good news, to baptism—the identification of our lives with Christ’s dying and rising, and to the celebration of the Eucharist—the manifestation of the power of that resurrection until he comes again.

Christ is risen! Alleluia and Amen!

B: Lent IV (RCL) 22 March 2009

John 3:14-21

Numbers 21:4-9

I grew up in a tea-totaling environment, so I was never conditioned to hang out it bars. But when California banned smoking in all restaurants and bars, Brenda and I very often preferred to have dinner in the bar or lounge rather than the main dining area of a restaurant. A cocktail lounge is a very … what shall we say? … a very fluid place, is it not? It can be a place of relaxation and enjoyment and camaraderie with friends. And it can also be a place of mystery and … shall we say, mischief. After spending time in a bar, people often end up saying and doing things they later come to regret. And the consistent thing about such places is that the lights are always dim, sometimes so dim that you can barely see what you’re drinking or eating. I don’t know that we can exactly say why, but I don’t know of anybody, myself included, who would enjoy being in a lounge with the lights turned up to what we would consider normal in, say, an office, or a supermarket, or even a living room.

And I can’t help but be reminded of this whenever I read the nineteenth verse of the third chapter of St John’s gospel: “Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.” I’m not saying that everything that goes on in a bar is evil, but a lot of evil things go on in bars, and it’s really no wonder at all that we like to keep the lights low in such places, because when the lights are low, we can’t quite see what’s going on, and that inability to see enables us to deceive ourselves about ourselves. Darkness can be downright addicting, because it’s a powerful anesthetic; it relieves the pain of what we might see if we looked at ourselves clearly, in the cold light of day. Unfortunately, addiction is a form of bondage, and our attachment to darkness can also prevent us from seeing and knowing our true selves, and from living the lives to which God called us when he made us.

Jesus addresses this precarious human condition in his well-known dialogue with the Jewish leader Nicodemus as recorded for us in the third chapter of St John’s gospel. Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness to pick his brain about some questions that were really bugging him. Jesus says, “You’ve got to be born again,” and Nicodemus says, “Well, how does that work, exactly?” and Jesus goes on about spirit and flesh and water and such things and finally arrives when we pick it up in this morning’s gospel reading:

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

The antidote to what ails us as human beings is something Jesus calls Eternal Life.  Eternal Life is what can lead us out of the darkness to which we have become addicted. Eternal Life is what can free us from our fear of seeing ourselves clearly and knowing ourselves truly.  Jesus wants to give us Eternal Life, and he tells Nicodemus that we receive Eternal Life by looking at Jesus specifically as he is “lifted up.” And when he says “lifted up,” he means something very specific.

But before we can go there, we need to make sure we’re up to speed on the Old Testament reference Jesus makes when he says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.”  Our first reading from the Book of Numbers told us the story. The ancient Hebrews had been freed from slavery in Egypt but were wandering in the Sinai desert for a generation under Moses’ leadership. Their camp was infested by poisonous snakes and people were getting bitten and dying. The Lord told Moses to make an image—a statue, in effect—of the sort of snake that was bothering them, and he told Moses to lift this faux-snake up where people could see it. Moses did just that, and, sure enough, when a snake-bitten person looked up at it, they were healed.  So what Jesus is telling Nicodemus, in effect, is that all human beings are snake-bit—snake-bit by the power of Sin and Death. This is why we like the lights turned low in bars; this is why we prefer darkness over light; this is why we are afraid to see ourselves and know ourselves as we really are. And what, then, do we need to do? We need to look up and live. We need to look on Jesus, lifted up for us as Moses’ serpent statue was lifted up for the people in the wilderness. And how is Jesus lifted up for us? He is lifted up on the cross. He is lifted up in his resurrection. He is lifted up in his ascension back to the right hand of the Father. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Unfortunately, one inference many of us make when we encounter passages of scripture such as this is that “eternal life” is a possession that we own and have stashed away so we can forget about it until we need it. We think of Eternal Life the way we think of a coin collection, or a stamp collection, or a baseball card collection. It’s stuck away in a drawer. We know it’s there, and we’re glad it’s there, but we may go several days without thinking about it. We hope that it will increase in value, and that should the day come that we need to cash it in, we’ll be able to do so at a profit. Eternal Life isn’t something we need now, it’s something we’ll need later. So we have it now so we will have it later. Someone might ask us, “Are you saved? Do you have Eternal Life?” and we’ll want to say, “Why sure. I ‘looked up’ at Jesus, so I’m saved. I have Eternal Life. I don’t exactly need it yet, but I have it for when I do need it.”  

But I’m here today to tell you that looking “up” at Jesus is not simply a one-time move, a mere glance. Rather, it is a matter of gazing at the “lifted up” Jesus and keeping our gaze fixed there until we are completely healed. And what makes this kind of challenging is that when we look up at Jesus, he looks back at us, and his gaze can be quite uncomfortable, because penetrating light emanates from his eyes. We don’t like being looked at by penetrating light. It’s like if somebody all of a sudden kicks up the lights in the cocktail lounge at 11 PM. We might see things we’d prefer not to see. We might feel just a little bit … judged. As Jesus tells Nicodemus,  

…this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.

You see, as long as we think of Eternal Life as a possession that we acquire and then hide away until we need it—that is, as we tend to think of it, when we die—then we are subject to what I might call photophobia—and I’m not talking about fear of having your picture taken(!) but fear of light. Jesus says, “… every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” But when we keep our gaze fixed on Jesus, looking up and persisting in looking up at him “lifted up” for our salvation, then Eternal Life becomes a present reality of our experience, something that we live in and benefit from even now, and not merely a future hope. When we can make this sort of mental move, we then have the resources at our disposal to be able to live fully in the present and fully in freedom: Free from self-deception, free from fear, and free from anxiety. Somebody get the lights. Amen.

B: Lent III (3 March 2009)

Psalm 19:7-14

Exodus 26:1-17

About 35 years ago, American involvement in the Vietnam War came to an end, and the U.S. military stopped inducting draftees. Nonetheless, the Selective Service System remained in business, and the requirement that young men register for the draft when they turn 18 was never repealed. Apparently, however, there arose a popular misimpression to the contrary, and the government bureaucrats in charge of such things were alarmed at the level of noncompliance. So they resorted to desperate measures, and retained the services of an advertising agency. The resulting campaign was run for several years during the 1990s—on television, on radio, and in print. There were several different scenarios that set up the situation, but the punchline was always the same: “It’s not just a good idea, it’s the LAW.”

It’s the law.

Those words can evoke different responses in different people. In some, they call forth humble compliance, a submission to something larger than oneself, a realization that the rule of law is the very basis of civilized society. In others, the phrase stirs up a spirit of rebellious defiance, like a playground bully exclaiming, “Oh yeah? Well make me!”

But in either case, it does get our attention. Whether we comply with the law or defy the law, our behavior is nevertheless defined in terms of the law.

In today’s liturgy, we are confronted with the ultimate expression of the concept of law: the Ten Commandments. They have been around for more than 3,000 years, and constitute the bedrock of the Judaeo-Christian moral tradition. Within the culture of Anglican Christianity, the Decalogue, as the Ten Commandments are known, is particularly conspicuous and ingrained. When Archbishop Cranmer reworked the liturgy of the Eucharist for the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, he put the Ten Commandments at the very beginning of the service, and they have remained there—either prescribed or as an option—ever since. In many parish churches both in England and in older parts of America, they are engraved in stone or wood and displayed prominently on the east wall. One might argue, of course, that the Ten Commandments are honored more in the breach than in the observance—but either way, they are conspicuous.

The notion of law seems obvious enough. Every human society and community has it in one form or another. If we break the law, there is some adverse consequence, some kind of punishment, either now or later. If we keep the law, there is some sort of reward or other pleasant consequence (even if it’s just the avoidance of a negative one). But can it really be all that simplistic? I suspect we do well to disabuse ourselves of childish misconceptions

about law in general, and God’s law in particular. One of these misconceptions is that, by keeping God’s law faithfully, we can put God in our debt. By walking the straight and narrow, we can obligate God to bless us or favor us. By obeying God, we have earned our reward, and it is morally incumbent upon Him to produce it, to hand it over, as if it had been justly bought and paid for.

The fact is, though, every arrow we shoot toward the target of trying to earn God’s favor by keeping His law falls way short of the mark. The New Testament Greek word for “sin” is hamartia, and it literally means “falling short of the mark.” St Paul tells is in the epistle to the Romans that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Some of our arrows, to be sure, get further on down toward the target than others, but they all fall short. So no amount of law keeping can ethically obligate God to even give us the time of day, let alone a heavenly reward.

Another misconception thinks in terms not of results, but of effort. This is certainly a more kindly view. It doesn’t matter that we hit the target, but only that we try really hard, give it our best effort, and get as close as we can. This inclines God to love us, or perhaps only like us, or at least think we’re cute. We could do worse, I suppose, than to be God’s affectionately smiled-at pets, mascots of the kingdom of Heaven. But such a view woefully underestimates the nature and purpose of human existence—we are created, after all, in the very image and likeness of God, to be His friends, not his pets. But more than that, the “A for effort” view of keeping the law betrays a paltry understanding of the purity of God’s holiness. It isn’t that God is arbitrarily mean or cosmically uptight. But by his very nature, in his essential being, God cannot indefinitely tolerate imperfection. He is patient and long-suffering and abounding in mercy. He accepts me, as the song says, “just as I am,” but he does not wish me to remain in that condition! He wants me to be able to hit the target every time, and not ever fall short. And he will not simply move the target in order to enable me to do so. That would not be fair, either to God or to me.

Now, from a negative perspective, there’s another misimpression of what it means to be law-abiding. The experience of many is that the law is a cruel joke, by which God amuses himself by watching us fail. “Oops! There they go again, those silly humans. Won’t they ever get it right?” Or, in a less cynical and more rational mode, the law is not really “from God” at all, but, rather, a projection onto God of the human need for security, for boundaries we can rely on. The courageous thing to do is to admit that all laws are man-made, and while many of them may indeed be good ideas, we are not ultimately accountable to any of them. No law is immune from the possibility that circumstances may justify an exception. The Ten Commandments are, in effect, ten “guidelines” which are good to check in with before making an ethical decision.

Now, I hope I don’t have to tell you that I believe all of these notions—that we can obligate God by keeping the law, that we can increase the chances of God liking us if we try really hard to keep the law, that the law is a cruel joke for God’s entertainment, and the that law is merely a human invention and projection—all of these notions are based on false suppositions. But they arise from an understandable desire to integrate our immediate experience with our search for ultimate meaning, to have our conception of what is ideal for us determined by our prior experience of what is real for us. And so there are fragments of truth and goodness in what is otherwise a nasty pile of selfishness and moral relativism.

The 19th Psalm, which is part of our prayer at this liturgy, expresses in beautiful poetry what I am trying to say through less than adequate prose:  “The law of the Lord is perfect...and revives the soul.” Far from being oppressive or authoritarian, far from being lifeless and technical, the Psalmist sees God’s law as life-giving, refreshing and reviving to the soul, like water flowing through a desert. He goes on to say that the “testimony  of the Lord...gives wisdom”—it gives us practical aid in coping with the bewildering complexities of human relationships. “The statutes”—what more legal-sounding word is there than “statutes”?!—the “statutes of the Lord and just and rejoice the heart.” There is something beautiful about justice, just as there is in an elegantly crafted geometric pattern. Both are a joy to behold. And it is only the law that allows us to see the beauty of justice, that allows our hearts to rejoice thereby.

The Psalmist continues, “The commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes.” Eyes tell the story, don’t they? When someone’s heart and soul are whole and integrated, you can tell it in his or her eyes, and vice versa. It is the commandment of the Lord that reveals the integrity of the way we live, a revelation that is visible in our eyes.

According to the Psalmist, then, there is intrinsic good that is made evident in the law. The law refreshes and nourishes and strengthens. To be nourished and refreshed and strengthened are the fruits of a life lived close to the heart of God. In fact, “keeping the law” is a practical description of what it looks like when we align ourselves with the flow of God’s loving energy.  It’s not that the law is an end in itself. We don’t keep the law just for the sake of keeping the law. In fact, our aim shouldn’t be “keeping the law” at all, it should be singing in harmony with God, allowing our energy to flow in the same direction in which his is flowing, letting our hearts assume the shape of God’s heart.

And how do we know how well we are accomplishing these aims? By means of the law. The law is a measuring stick by which we can tell how we’re doing in the process of offering ourselves to God for the purpose of being blessed and broken and given for the life of the world. The law of the Lord is perfect and just and clear. It revives the soul and gives wisdom and joy and light.

Most of us have used a computer program. Even if there’s not an appliance in our home that we call a computer, if we drive a car that’s been built in the last fifteen years, or use a cell phone, or even a microwave, we are, in fact, using a computer. Now, for everything that we use each of these “computers” for, some programer had to sit down and write what they call “lines of code”—hundreds and thousands of individual commands that tell the computer how to do what we want it to do, breaking down complex tasks into simple “Yes/No” bits of information. Of course, when we use a computer, for instance, to support a graphics program capable of creating beautiful works of visual art, most of us are not thinking about lines of code. But the lines of code—prosaic and dull and technical as they are—the lines of code are essential to the creation of the poetic and artistic and transcendently beautiful output that eventually emerges from the color printer.

“Lines of code” describe, in effect, what it “looks like” to be able to create graphic art. It’s the same relationship between God’s law and human moral behavior, human integrity. The law describes what it looks like to be attuned to God’s love, God’s ways. We can’t keep it perfectly. Much of the time, we can’t even keep it well. But by the grace of Christ, we can, in time,  be transformed into people who keep it naturally, without even thinking about it, as part of our redeemed nature. Only then will the law become obsolete. Until then, it’s a good idea to keep the law. Amen.